Tsathoggua
: Yeb (parent) Yabou (offspring) Yog-Sothoth (grandparent) Shub-Niggurath (grandparent) Nug (uncle) Cthulhu (cousin) : Cxaxukluth (grandfather) Ghisguth (father) Zstylzhemghi (mother) Zvilpogghua (offspring) |spouse = : Shathak |affiliations = Great Old Ones |first = "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" (written order) "The Whisperer in Darkness" (publication order) |created by = H. P. Lovecraft (name only) Clark Ashton Smith }} Tsathoggua, also known as the Sleeper of N'kai, is an entity in the Cthulhu Mythos shared fictional universe. He is the creation of Clark Ashton Smith and is part of his Hyperborean cycle. Tsathoggua (or Zhothaqquah) is described as an Old One, a godlike being from the pantheon. He was invented in Smith's short story "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros," written in 1929 and published in the November 1931 issue of Weird Tales.Robert M. Price, "About 'The Tale of Satampra Zeiros'", The Tsathoggua Cycle, p. 56. His first appearance in print, however, was in H.P. Lovecraft's story "The Whisperer in Darkness", written in 1930 and published in the August 1931 Weird Tales. Description The first description of Tsathoggua in which the protagonists encounter one of the entity's idols: Later, Tsathoggua is described again: Tsathoggua is often found asleep. He is incredibly lazy and refuses to leave his chambers unless mortally threatened. If disturbed, he will eat him unless the awakener has a sacrifice to offer; in which case, Tsathoggua will eat the sacrifice instead and then fall back into hibernation. However, there are exceptions. When the wizard Ezdagor sent the Hyperborean Lord Ralibar Vooz as a sacrifice in Smith's "The Seven Geases", Tsathoggua refused him and bound Ralibar Vooz to a geas, sending him to be eaten by another denizen of Mount Voormithadreth (the next five likewise did the same). Robert M. Price notes that "Lovecraft's Tsathoggua and Smith's differ at practically every point." Lovecraft, dropping Smith's bat and sloth comparisons, refers to the entity in "The Whisperer in Darkness" as the "amorphous, toad-like god-creature mentioned in the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Necronomicon and the Commoriom myth-cycle preserved by the Atlantean high-priest Klarkash-Ton" ( : "The Whisperer in Darkness") --the priest's name a tip of the hat to Tsathoggua's creator. Later, in "The Horror in the Museum", a story ghost-written by Lovecraft, he writes, "Black Tsathoggua moulded itself from a toad-like gargoyle to a sinuous line with hundreds of rudimentary feet." Other Sources It is likely that Tsathoggua can alter his shape, the better to adapt to whatever environment he is in. When he dwelt on Cykranosh (a planet we know today as Saturn), he probably had a much different form, probably looking more like his paternal uncle Hziulquoigmnzhah , whose head dangles underneath his spheroid-like body. Dwelling |"The Whisperer in Darkness"}} Tsathoggua dwells deep beneath the earth in N'kai. Tsathoggua once dwelt inside Mount Voormithadreth in Hyberborea, but left after the continent iced over. In The Old One by John Glasby, Tsathoggua is stated to reside in the ruined underwater city of Yuth near the Bahamas, although this is in clear contradiction of the original source material. Servitors Formless spawn Tsathoggua's will is carried out by the formless spawn, polymorphic entities made of black goo. They are extremely resilient and very difficult to dispatch. Formless spawn can take any shape and can attack their targets in nearly every conceivable way. They are surprisingly flexible and plastic, and can quickly flow into a room through the tiniest of cracks. They attack by trampling their targets, biting them, or crushing them with their grasp. Formless spawn often rests in basins in Tsathoggua's temples and keep the sanctuary from being defiled by nonbelievers. In his story At the Mountains of Madness, H. P. Lovecraft states that "a few daring mystics have hinted at a pre-Pleistocene origin for the fragmentary Pnakotic Manuscripts, and have suggested that the devotees of Tsathoggua were as alien to mankind as Tsathoggua itself." The formless spawn appears as adversaries in the video game Quake."Quotes from Sandy Petersen" (web site). Other appearances In 1975, Tsathoggua made a cameo in The Golden Apple, book two of The Illuminatus! Trilogy, by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, where he was also referred to as Saint Toad. The Tsathoggua Cycle In 2005, Chaosium published a Cthulhu Mythos anthology edited by Robert M. Price called The Tsathoggua Cycle, which comprised the original Clark Ashton Smith stories featuring Tsathoggua, along with tales by other authors in which the entity has a starring role. The short story collection includes: * "From the Parchment of Pnom" by Clark Ashton Smith * "The Seven Geases" by Clark Ashton Smith * "The Testament of Athammaus" by Clark Ashton Smith * "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" by Clark Ashton Smith * "The Theft of the Thirty-Nine Girdles" by Clark Ashton Smith * "Shadow of the Sleeping God" by James Ambuehl * "The Curse of the Toad" by Loay Hall and Terry Dale * "Dark Swamp" by James Anderson * "The Old One" by John Glasby * "The Oracle of Sadoqua" by Ron Hilger * "The Horror Show" by Gary Myers * "The Tale of Toad Loop" by Stanley C. Sargent * "The Crawling Kingdom" by Rod Heather * "The Resurrection of Kzadool-Ra" by Henry J. Vester III Family Smith literally wed Lovecraft's creations to his own gods, which seem to be molded more like the greek pantheon than the cosmic group of Lovecraft's fiction.Robert M. Price, recognizing that Smith's gods dwell beneath Mount Voormithadreth, remarked that is fitting that Smith's "Hyperboean Olympians should be under a mountain rather than atop one!" (Price, "About 'The Seven Geases'", The Tsathoggua Cycle, p. 8). Indeed, he assigned outlandish familial relationships to his gods — for example, making the Saturnian being Hziulquoigmnzhah the "uncle" of TsathogguaWill Murray, "Introduction", The Book of Hyperborea. — and ascribed this bizarre family tree to the Parchments of Pnom, Hyperborea's leading "genealogist and noted prophet".Clark Ashton Smith, "The Family Tree of the Gods" in the The Acolyte (Summer 1934). Kzadool-Ra was a son of Tsathoggua, who destroyed him in a fit of jealousy. Gallery Tsathoggua_(Éditions_Sans-Détour).jpg|Tsathoggua (Call of Cthulhu, French version) Tsathoggua_(Richard_Luong).jpg|Tsathoggua (Cthulhu Wars) Tsathoggua_(Paizo_Inc).jpg|Tsathoggua (Pathfinder) Tsatthogua_hub.png | Tsathoggua by Hubert Spala Tsath10517.jpg Tsathoggua2.jpg Tsathogua.jpg Tsathoggua.jpg Tsathoggua_(Marvel_Comics).jpg|Tsathouggua (Savage Sword of Conan) Behind the Mythos George Olshevsky named the nonconvex snub polyhedra after some other Great Old Ones, with the Great snub icosidodecahedron as "Tsathoggua". See also * Zvilpogghua * Zstylzhemghi * Ycnágnnisssz * Shathak * Sfatlicllp * Knygathin Zhaum * Hziulquoigmnzhah * Ghisguth * Cxaxukluth References de: es: Category:Characters Category:Great Old Ones Category:Articles written on in-Mythos topics Category:Articles including information from the Expanded Cthulhu Mythos Category:Articles including information from the "Lovecraft Circle" Myth Cycles Category:Marvel (Cthulhu Mythos) Category:Pathfinder (Cthulhu Mythos) Category:Mammalian Old Ones Category:Hyborian (Cthulhu Mythos)